


colored black by killing machines

by xxpaynoxx



Series: Bilbo Dies [3]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, this is based off of dirty paws by of monsters and men, wow this hurt a lot i appreciate this a little too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 06:49:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3800872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxpaynoxx/pseuds/xxpaynoxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin returns to the shire, only to find it sickened and every hobbit dead. Well, almost every hobbit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	colored black by killing machines

**Author's Note:**

> oh god why am I doing this to myself..........

Thorin could only imagine what the Shire looked like in the beginning of spring.

Bilbo had talked about it many times, before he returned home. He would talk about how the honeysuckle was the first to bloom, and the small hobbit children would suck the honey out of the flowers and giggle and be shooed away by their parents. Next were the tulips, lilacs, and all other sorts of flowers, which covered Hobbiton in a hued carpet of every color you could think of.

You could even smell summer in the air, Bilbo had explained. The breeze would be light and smelled of freshly cut grass as the hobbits tended to their gardens. Their vegetables would be growing, plump pumpkins and long zucchini and tomatoes and potatoes ready to be picked by the end of summer. Even the oldest, grumpiest hobbit in the town would come and sit on his porch, smoking from a pipe he’d fashioned himself and watch the younglings run around, squealing as they chased the brightly-colored butterflies.

But it was not so.

The first red flag they found was when Kíli noticed the grass. It turned an ugly yellow color, and was brittle to the touch. The flowers were all dead, their heads dangling from their stalks like hanged men. A large hedge arose from the ground, its leaves yellow in death and brittle stalks rustling in the wind like skeletons. Thorin stopped the other four, and jumped down from his pony. “I have a bad feeling about this. Leave the ponies here,” he shouted, and the other four dwarves began to tie up the ponies as Thorin came up to the hedge.

The one thing that seemed very odd was the noise.

It was deathly quiet. No singing, no breeze, no birds chirping, and no voices except for theirs. Something was most certainly wrong, and a stench hung on the air that was not unlike a certain forest that Thorin remembered from a long time ago. He began to panic, taking half the hedge with him as he bulldozed through and began to run. Balin’s call was lost in Thorin’s ears as he raced up the hill and stopped dead at the site before him.

The Shire was a death ground.

The grass was yellow and white, dead. The trees had lost all of their leaves, their bare branches carving out the sky like thick dark fingers. Thorin could not believe his eyes. What evil had decided on the Shire of all places to wreak evil? They were not warriors; they were farmers, gardeners, cooks. Hardly the stuff of legend.

Thorin did not wait for the others to catch up with him. He slowly made his way down the hill, his stomach in turmoil over the thick stench of death that hung in the air. He quickly opened one of the doors, and noticed that nothing had been touched for quite some time, for a thin coating of dust hung in the air.

He saw a form, slumped over on the floor, face down. Thorin made his way inside the hole and shook the body. With no response, the dwarf turned the hobbit over. At first, he wasn’t sure what was wrong. The hobbit’s eyes were wide open and glossy, showing that he was definitely dead. But what was wrong with him?

That’s when Thorin noticed the black liquid.

It trailed out of the hobbit’s mouth, much like drool trailing out of a toddler’s mouth when they’re asleep. It was on his hands, too, like dried blood. Thorin rose up and went further into the hole, scouring the kitchen. There, he found a woman, dropped dead with the same characteristics as the man before her. Two children were in rooms adjacent to the kitchen, also dead. The bodies were stiff, the moisture sucked out of their skin long ago.

On the stove, the flame burnt out long ago, was a large pot. The water was unnaturally still, and dead mosquitoes floated on the surface. Thorin stuck his nose over it and reeled, coughing. The smell was unlike anything he had encountered before; it smelled strongly of decay, but whatever was in that pot must have killed this hobbit family.

He took a strainer and poured the water through it, and came up with four large mushrooms. They were clearly infected, their stalks dark with fungus and parts of their heads crawling with ants. Thorin backpedaled quickly out of the hobbit hole, his breath becoming short as he shut the door behind him. Fear gripped his heart as he looked at the four dwarves before him, who must have followed him down into the town.

“They’re dead,” Thorin whispered. Fíli gasped, and Kíli bowed his head. Dwalin and Thorin shared the same glance, and Thorin knew his friend was thinking the same thing he was.

Bilbo.

The dwarf king had never sprinted so fast in his entire life. He tore up the hill, Dwalin close behind him, and wrenched open the green door. Nothing seemed out of place, and everything looked recently used. No lights were on, but it was the middle of the day. Thorin turned to Dwalin, glancing at the three other dwarves who were just now running up the hill.

“Stay here. I’ll go in, and I’ll call you if I need help,” Thorin said, and Dwalin couldn’t get a word in edgewise before Thorin had disappeared into Bag End. Fíli made an effort to go after his uncle, but Dwalin held him back. “This is something that he needs to discover for himself,” he said softly. The four dwarves sat outside of the house and waited, even though they somewhat knew what lay inside.

~~~

Thorin called Bilbo’s name plenty of times, and getting no answer back. His heart began to race as the realization that his hobbit was most likely dead in the same way as all the others, and he searched even more fervently. Finally, he found the study, and saw Bilbo hunched over a thick red book. He was hunched over, a quill paused in his hand. The quill was still.

Thorin quietly walked in and knelt next to him. “Bilbo?” he asked, turning the hobbit towards him. He screamed, jumping away from the hobbit and shuddering. Bilbo’s eyes were empty, staring into space. His jaw was agape, black spit oozing out of his open mouth. His skin was wrinkled from the lack of moisture, and his hands were covered in the black goo.

Thorin whimpered, carefully taking Bilbo out of the seat and placing him in his lap, tears welling in his eyes as his hand supported Bilbo’s head. “Oh, Bilbo, I didn’t want it to end like this,” Thorin whispered, his voice cracking at the end as he began to cry over the hobbit’s body.

He didn’t hear it, but the four dwarves had crowded into the study, and when Thorin looked up, he met Balin’s glassy eyes. Dwalin could not bear to look at Bilbo, and Fíli was too busy crying into his brother's shoulder. Kíli looked on the verge of tears as well. Thorin laid Bilbo out on the floor, making sure the hobbit looked comfortable and only sleeping instead of dead.

“Let’s go,” Thorin whispered, his voice quavering as he left Bag End. The four dwarves walked after Thorin, who stumbled out and blinked at the harsh white sun glaring from the sky. Dwalin shut the door to Bag End behind him, and the company continued down the hill.

That is, until Kíli heard something.

The dwarf prince stopped dead in his tracks, and cocked his head to one side, listening hard. “Everyone stop!” he yelled, and the other three paused, looking back at Kíli, confusion in their eyes. Kíli walked over to a small hedge, hearing small snuffles coming from inside the hedge. He knew they couldn’t have been a squirrel or a small animal. The noises sounded too…human.

Kíli brushed the hedge back and revealed two small hobbits.

The first was small, with bright blue eyes and jet-black, curly hair. The other had his arms firmly wrapped around the first, his green eyes narrowed as he brushed his blonde hair out of his face. The black-haired hobbit child had been sniffling, his eyes red-rimmed from crying. Kíli began to reach his arm into the hedge to comfort the two little halflings, but the blonde-haired boy snarled.

“Don’t you dare touch him!” he spat indignantly, and the black-haired hobbit snuggled deeper into the former’s arms, snuffling. Kíli’s hand jerked back, fearing that he could be bitten by this crazy young hobbit. Thorin appeared next to Kíli, squatting down and looking into the hedge. “Might I ask why two little hobbits are hiding in a hedge of all places?” Thorin asked, biting back the rest of his question.

And why are you not dead like the rest of them?

The blonde-haired boy got to his feet and stepped out of the hedge, helping the other out as well with his hand. Then, he turned to Thorin, scowling at him under his unruly curls. “Mister Bilbo told me to take Frodo and get out of the Shire, but we couldn’t leave! We didn’t have anywhere to go! So, we decided to hide and wait for Mister Bilbo to come out and tell us we’ll be okay,” he explained, his small hands firmly planted on his hips.

Thorin watched the halfling with an expression of amusement, until he mentioned Bilbo. The smaller hobbit, who must have been Frodo, came forward and tugged on Thorin’s sleeve. “Do you know where my uncle is?” he asked. Thorin’s eyes once again welled with tears, and he brought Frodo into a fierce embrace. “I’m afraid that Bilbo...isn’t here anymore,” he whispered.

Frodo pushed himself away from the dwarf. “No, you’re lying!” he wailed as he raced off up to the green door of Bag End, which seemed so far away now that Thorin had walked back down the hill. The blonde boy watched Frodo go, and looked at Thorin. “Where’s my dad and my mum? Are they okay?”

The look in Thorin’s eyes gave him his answer.

He took off as well, running into a nearby house with a bright yellow door. Dwalin went to go after the boy, but Balin held him back. As Dwalin looked incredulously at his brother, Balin patted his shoulder. “Let him go, Dwalin. He needs to discover for himself,” he whispered. Dwalin slouched, as if all of the fight had left his body.

It was quite some time before the two boys came out of the houses. Frodo came down and clutched Thorin’s hand without a sound. The blonde came out of his house and closed the door behind him, his hands covering his face as he cried. Frodo broke away from Thorin and raced over to the blonde, bringing him into an embrace.

“It’s okay, Sam, they’re in a better place,” Frodo explained shakily, but that only made Sam cry harder. “Why did they leave? Who could have done this?” he whimpered, and Frodo went silent. “Sam, I don’t know, but I promise you that we’ll find out, together,” he whispered, stroking Sam’s soft golden curls.

Thorin walked over to the pair of hobbits, placing a hand on Frodo’s shoulder. “Would you like to come with us?” he asked. Frodo looked at Sam, who had stopped crying and was looking at Thorin. “I suppose we should. We have nowhere else to go,” Frodo whispered, and Sam sniffled, nodding. Thorin helped Sam and Frodo onto their feet, and guided them away from the yellow door.

Before they passed the hedge, Thorin paused, looking back at Bag End, the faded green door so far away from him now. He turned away and followed the others, with Fíli and Kíli entertaining the two hobbits on their adventures.

And as they rode back to Erebor, Thorin’s head raced. What had caused so much death in the Shire? What had happened to make those mushrooms the way they were? Who would attack the Shire of all places?

There was an uneasy feeling in Thorin’s stomach that warned him that he would find out soon.

 


End file.
